


Un-Vanilla

by neko_fish



Series: Starfleet University [5]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Chat rooms, Crack, Humor, M/M, Pantomime Horse, Shenanigans, Star Wars References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-08
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-11 14:41:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1174296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neko_fish/pseuds/neko_fish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there is a McKirk Watch and Jim is clearly 'the least vanilla guy ever'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Un-Vanilla

“So apparently Christine thinks that you’re ‘the least vanilla guy ever’,” Leonard says one day. They’re just sitting on the couch and watching their usual shows as always when the words just come flying out of his mouth. He doesn’t know why he says it, but he already knows he’s going to regret it.

Jim chuckles. There’s a dangerous gleam in his eyes when he turns away from the TV (because commercial breaks go on forever). “Oh? Is that right? When’d she say this?”

Leonard takes a moment to think about it because there have been way too many incidents for him to keep track of who said what during which one. “The ‘snacking incident’, I think.”

“It’s funny you should bring this topic up because there was this thing I was totally gonna show you but then forgot to until just now,” Jim tells him.

Narrowing his eyes, he asks, “Show me what?”

“There’s a McKirk Watch on campus, apparently,” Jim says.

He furrows his brow and repeats, “A what now?”

“Yeah, apparently there’s a chat group where they just speculate things about our sex life. Like, today, I bought whipped cream for that pie we bought yesterday and these folks now think we’re planning on having food sex tonight.” Jim holds up his phone to show him the conversation. “They’re our biggest fans, Bones.”

Leonard stares at the screen for a long time. “This is a strange congregation of the worst kind. I better not know any of these people. How’d you even find out about this? Jesus Christ, half of the things they’re suggesting here aren’t humanly possible.”

“Gaila stumbled across this awhile back and showed it to me on the promise that I’d tell her if I decide to prank them,” Jim tells him.

“And you just thought of something,” Leonard concludes warily.

Jim merely grins and turns back to the TV.

\--

They go grocery shopping that weekend and make a show of it.

Or, at least Jim does, as he runs around the produce section of the store with a shit-eating grin on his face.

“Dammit, Jim, this is such a bad idea,” Leonard protests with his arms crossed and a basket slung around his arm. He hopes the look on his face clearly portrays his disapproval and clear confusion as to how he got talked into this. But then again, maybe it’s not that hard to figure out at all, he thinks. Jim tells him to jump and he’ll read Jim’s mind and jump however high Jim wants him to without asking (though not without complaint)—hell, Jim probably wouldn’t need to tell him to jump in the first place. “An absolutely terrible idea,” he repeats.

Not surprisingly, Jim gives him a slap on the back and smiles all too cheerfully. “C’mon, Bones, it’ll be fun! Now, should we get English Cucumbers or Garden Cucumbers? The English is longer, but the Garden’s got more…texture. Should we just give both a try?” Then, because Jim’s a terrible person and someone might be listening, he adds with a suggestive eyebrow waggle, “We can even eat them afterwards.”

By the end of their trip, Leonard’s got a bag of assorted vegetables while Jim’s got a bottle of salad dressing. “This is never gonna work,” he grumbles.

Crossing the campus with their produce, Jim reaches out and pats him on the arm. “Don’t worry, we’ll start with the small ones first and work our way up. You’re the one who said you wanted me to start eating healthier, Bones. What better incentive could there be?”

“This is _not_ what I meant by that and you know it,” Leonard complains, jabbing a finger into Jim’s shoulder to emphasize his point. “And with the amount of dressing you’re going to use, you might as well be eating mozzarella sticks wrapped in bacon.”

That gets a laugh out of Jim. “Oh my god, you’re the best. This is gonna be _so_ awesome. Just you wait and see, Bones. And we can try the bacon-wrapped cheese sticks next time. I’m sure the grease will be put to excellent use.”

He rolls his eyes. “Unbelievable—and disgusting.”

The two of them return to his dorm and shut the blinds. Leonard goes to prepare himself a salad while Jim pulls out his laptop and they wait for the much anticipated outburst online.

They aren’t disappointed.

The chat room bursts into life just minutes later, with one of the mods sending messages via their cell phone.

“This is a horrible misuse of technology. People created these things for the betterment of mankind, not for _this_ ,” Leonard grumbles, popping a slice of cucumber into his mouth. “Whose account are we using right now, anyway?”

“Gaila’s. Don’t worry, we’re ‘afk’ so no one will expect us to contribute to the discussion,” Jim reassures him. “By the way, ‘afk’ means—”

“I know what ‘afk’ means,” he snaps. “Just how low-tech do you think I am? I text you every day, don’t I? There’s no way I could’ve possibly done that without learning all your texting jargon. What with your ‘wtf’s and your ‘lol’s. This is ridiculous.”

Jim shoots him an affectionate grin. “You’re so cute sometimes, Bones. It’s like talking to my grandpa.”

“You’ve never spoken to your grandfather before,” he counters.

“Well, I imagine it’d be something similar.”

“Shut up and eat your vegetables.”

“Yes, mother.”

The chat room flashes as one of the participants types out, _“I’m not hearing anything from McCoy’s room. You can normally hear **something** when they’re going at it. Maybe they’re just eating the food.”_

Jim’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise, but then quickly recovers and grins. “Apparently we have an audience, Bones. We really should give them a nice, _loud_ show.”

He frowns. “Jim, what are you—”

Without waiting, Jim leans back and slaps the wall loudly. “You make the _best_ salad ever, Bones,” he all but moans.

Leonard makes a scandalized face and puts his carrot stick down. But then he remembers that he’s not above pranking unsuspecting people and decides to join in, “Dammit, Jim! You’re getting dressing everywhere!”

They’re best friends for a reason.

Baby blue eyes light up and Jim leans in for a kiss. Slapping the wall again, he adds, “That’s not the only dressing that’s gonna get everywhere when I’m done with you!”

He chucks a slice of cucumber at the other. “Jesus Christ, Jim!”

The chat room flares up again.

And it’s all going well until one person decides to write,

_“More food sex? That seems kind of vanilla for Kirk. Not going to lie, I’m a little disappointed at the lack of creativity.”_

That sets off all sorts of internal alarms and causes Leonard to frown. He looks over at Jim, who narrows his eyes at the message, taking the statement as a personal insult. “ _Kind of **vanilla**_? Oh, it is _on,_ username cm36.”

Leonard facepalms and groans, “Goddamn it.”

\--

The next day finds the two sitting in the engineering faculty’s lounge eating leftover salad because they had bought enough vegetables to feed a small village. A girl walks by and grins. “Hey Jim, enjoying your leftovers?”

Leonard’s surprised for two reasons, first of which is that other than Gaila, he’s never talked to another female engineer before (mostly because there are only about thirty of them in the entire faculty). And second—she _knows_.

His can feel his face reddening, but Jim manages to keep his cool. “Yeah, the salad’s awesome. It tasted better yesterday though. Maybe it’s the dressing.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s the dressing.” The girl shoots them an unmistakeable ‘if you know what I mean’ look and walks off with a laugh.

Once she’s gone, he reaches out and grabs Jim by the arm and pulls him close. “Jim, she knew. How’d she know?”

“Ow! Hey, take it easy on the arm—why are you looking at me like it’s _my_ fault!?”

He arches a brow. “Because it _is_?”

“Only partially!” Jim protests. “Like, maybe 70%.”

Leonard shoots Jim his most unimpressed look.

“Fine, it might’ve been my fault this time. But c’mon, there’s a perfectly logical explanation to all of this. She’s either in the chat group or that chat group has a person with influential powers over social groups and they’re fueling the rumour mill. You know what this calls for, Bones?”

“Some down time?” he suggests.

“An experiment! Let’s see how far we can take this before someone calls bullshit!” Jim tells him, eyes glowing with excitement. “That’ll show that cm36!”

Leonard rolls his eyes. “Here’s a crazy idea: how about we _not_?”

“That’s the spirit, Bones!”

As expected, Jim’s already too caught up with his new plans to listen to unimportant things like _reason_.

\--

He really shouldn’t be anywhere near as surprised as he is when Jim shows up the next week with a huge bag of _stuff_ in his arms. Eyeing the bags suspiciously, he takes all of three seconds to throw his arms in the air in defeat. “I’ll bite. What’d you bring?”

Jim grins. “Well, Bones, I’m glad you asked! Since fake-food sex was too vanilla—”

“Fake-food sex was _not_ too vanilla. Those people are just insane,” he says with a scowl.

“—so I was running around the mall and came across these!” Jim waves the bags around in the air in triumph. “We, Bones, are going to take a ridiculously sexy bath. I have bath salts, soap, rose petals and everything! Look, I even have a rubber ducky!”

“I can see about a million problems with your suggestion, Jim—”

Before he can finish his sentence, Jim’s already disappeared into the bathroom and turned the tap on.

“—the first of which is the size of our tub,” Leonard finishes with a sigh. “Of course you’re not listening. When do you ever listen? Oh, that’s right. _Never_.”

“Sorry, I didn’t catch any of that,” Jim calls out, proving his point. “Are you coming or not?”

And that’s how he finds himself sitting, only half submerged and curled up in a bathtub with one Jim Kirk. He’s uncomfortable and a little cold and all he can do is glare at the rubber ducky floating between them and then up at Jim.

Jim grins and squirts water at him.

With water dripping off his bangs, Leonard takes a deep breath and states as calmly as he can, “Jim. I am going to kill you. I am going to kill you and it will be in the slowest and most excruciating way imaginable. Then I’m going to drag your dead body over to woods where I’ll scatter your limbs across different open areas for animals to feast on—but not before pulling out all your teeth and flushing them down a toilet somewhere to avoid being found out through dental records. I’ll report you missing and you’ll never be found. The whole thing will be tragic.”

In response, Jim rolls his eyes and says sarcastically, “Oh stop it, Bones. You and your sweet talk. You’re making me blush,” and splashes him again.

A full water fight breaks out between them after that.

\--

“I hope you didn’t flood your bathroom or anything over the weekend,” Hikaru tells him with a pointed look over lunch on Monday.

Leonard arches a brow. “Why the sudden concern?”

Hikaru shrugs. “Reasons.”

“There are very interesting stories about you and Jim,” Pavel fills him in. “Involving lots of water. And a duck.”

“Wow, word really does get out quickly around here, doesn’t it?” Leonard mutters, impressed.

Pavel smiles. “Did you know baths were invented in Russia?”

\--

The week after that, Jim shows up with lightsabers, a vest, and a Princess Leia wig.

“No,” is his immediate response. He doesn’t even _want_ to know what Jim has in mind.

Jim pouts. “But, role-play!”

“With lightsabers? I’m pretty sure this scene didn’t happen in the movies,” he points out.

“I know that. These are to decide who’s playing who. We’ll duel and the loser has to wear wig for the rest of the day. It’s more exciting than flipping a coin, wouldn’t you agree?”

Leonard scowls and crosses his arms, trying desperately not to give in to the temptation. But who is he to say no to dueling with lightsabers _and_ a chance to wipe that smug grin off of Jim’s face? He heaves a loud sigh and gestures for a lightsaber. “Hand me one of those. Prepare to get your ass handed to you, princess.”

“You just want to be Han because you always shoot first,” Jim taunts.

He makes a face. “You didn’t just make that joke.”

After about half an hour of roughhousing and loudly reciting lines from the movies, there’s a knock at the door. The two of them exchange looks and Jim goes to open the door. “Yes? Hello, Jim Kirk’s dorm. How may I help you?” he asks, leaning against the doorway wearing nothing but his Leia wig and a pair of shorts, and a little out of breath from their dueling. “Oh, hey Christine, what’s up?”

“Hey—oh my god, Jim, what’s happening? Why are you wearing that? I’m interrupting something, aren’t I?—of course I am, what a stupid question,” Christine mutters to herself. “I just came by to drop off Leonard’s notes. Should I come back later or…?”

Jim grins. “Naw, I’ll go get Bones. I bet you’re dying to yell things at him.” Turning away from the door, he calls out, “Bones! Christine’s here with your notes! Come out here and say hi!”

“I hate you, Jim!” he yells back.

“No, you don’t, you stuck up, half-witted, scruffy-looking Nerf herder,” Jim retorts.

Rolling his eyes, he makes his way to the door. “Who’s scruffy-looking? And yeah, I’m pretty sure I do, your Worship.”

“I seriously feel like you’d make a better Leia than me with all that sass,” Jim says. “Anyway, I’m gonna go check on stuff.”

Once Jim disappears, Christine points a finger at him and yells triumphantly, “Role-play! I knew it!”

Leonard immediately shakes his head and begins to protest, “No, just listen for a second, it’s not like that. Christine—”

But she’s already got her phone out and started texting and sending pictures to people.

He tilts his head back and sighs, “Why are all my friends selectively deaf?”

When Monday comes around, after the seventh ‘force’ joke, Leonard wonders (not for the first time) how this is his life.

\--

Things only get worse from there and the level of ridiculousness shoots through the roof.

“Hey, Bones, look what I found in the engineering faculty’s storage room,” Jim calls from the doorway.

Leonard furrows his brows in confusion. “Why does the engineering faculty have all this stuff? And more importantly, what the hell are we supposed to do with a pantomime horse, a slinky, a can of Febreze, and a thing of salami?”

Jim shrugs. “That’s for the chat room to figure out. I’m just here to encourage their creativity.”

And boy, do they ever figure things out.

They figure things out in a way that leaves the two of them both awed and disturbed.

“Wow,” is all Jim manages to say.

“Yeah,” he agrees.

“No one’s gonna call BS, still? Really?”

Leonard shrugs. “Apparently not. Apparently this is something people can see you doing.”

“See us, Bones. They can see _us_ doing this.” Jim lets out an impressed whistle. “They must think we’re sex gods.”

“Well, no one will ever accuse you of being vanilla again, that’s for sure,” Leonard mutters.

In fact, it’s so awe-inspiring and disturbing that Leonard’s met with silence the next week. There aren’t any jokes or lewd comments. Instead, everyone just averts their eyes. He doesn’t let his mind dwell on the silence until he hears _“Text!”_ from his pocket and reads.  
  


**_15:28, J. Kirk to L. McCoy:_ **

_Pike just asked if I was okay and if I needed to see a counsellor._  
  


He’s about to reply when he hears “Leonard?”

Leonard looks up to see Nyota wearing a worried expression on her face. “Hey darlin’, is everything alright?”

She nods. “I’m fine. I just wanted to come find you and make sure you weren’t…you look like you’re okay. I’m glad.”  
  


**_15:30, L. McCoy to J. Kirk:_ **

_Yeah, this is serious._  
  


**_15:31, J. Kirk to L. McCoy:_ **

_Scotty just gave me a hug and Spock just checked my pulse. I think it’s time to tone things down._  
  


**_15:31, L. McCoy to J. Kirk:_ **

_JFC_  
  


**_15:32, J. Kirk to L. McCoy:_ **

_You’re adorable._

\--

At some point, Leonard begins to wonder if this one-sided, never-ending war between Jim and that cm36 person will ever end. Both sides seem to be enjoying themselves way too much.

It isn’t until Jim decides to go out and empty an entire Home Depot that a line is drawn—and not by him. Nope, he doesn’t even bat an eyelash when he sees Jim dragging _chains_ and planks of wood into his dorm room. “What now?”

Jim looks up and grins. “Not sure. DIY S&M dungeon?”

Sadly, a DIY S&M dungeon is actually considered ‘toning things down’ compared to what they went through with the pantomime horse.

Leonard looks around and snorts. “In _this_ tiny dorm room? I shouldn’t even have to tell you how impossible it’d be since _you’re_ the engineer here.”

The fact that he didn’t just outright say ‘no’ says a lot about just how desensitized he’s become to all this.

Crossing his arms in thought, Jim nods, looking a little disappointed. “Yeah, you’re right. I guess even if we build a multi-purpose table, it’d take up way too much space and block the TV. How about the next best thing then? Miniature pirate ship?” he suggests, holding up a hammer and nails.

“Miniature pirate ship,” he agrees, grabbing a plank of wood.

\--

They’ve just finished building the hull of the ship when there’s a knock on their door. Jim gets up to open it. “Hey Carol, what are you doing here?”

“I’m calling BS. You guys are _not_ building an S&M dungeon,” she says definitively instead of answering.

“Nope. We decided against it. It’s impractical. Too little space for so such an ambitious project—” Jim pauses and blinks. “How’d you even know about the sex dungeon?”

Carol shrugs. “Ways.”

Furrowing his brows, Leonard can practically see the cogs in Jim’s brain turning. “Wait, there’s no way news could’ve gotten out this quickly while the people are still talking about it in real time and only one person’s been silent for the last five minutes—are you cm36!? It stood for Carol Marcus!?”

With widened eyes, Carol looks like she’s ready to bolt. “I was bored—how’d you know about cm36? Wait, don’t tell me… _hotbabe71!_?”

Jim raises a hand. “That’s me.”

She crosses her arms and frowns. “A rather poor choice in username, wouldn’t you say?”

“Some might beg the differ,” Jim replies with a smug grin.

“I can’t believe it. It was you all along? But we had private chats! We _discussed_ things!” Carol says, sounding more scandalized than embarrassed.

“You guys had private chats to _discuss_ ‘things’?” Leonard asks incredulously, getting up to join the conversation.

“Yeah. What? Why are you looking at me like that?” Jim protests. “She had some really awesome ideas!” He turns back to Carol. “Sorry about him. Bones doesn’t appreciate creativity as much as I do sometimes.”

“Dammit, Jim, don’t just switch sides like that,” he snaps.

“Right. Sorry,” Jim quickly apologizes.

Carol frowns. “So what’s with the woodworking?”

“Miniature pirate ship,” Leonard answers. “Why don’t you come in and help us while you and Jim discuss just how _un_ -vanilla he is. Maybe we’ll finally get to put an end to this.”

She lets out an incredulous laugh. “Is this what all this is about?”

“Hey, it’s no laughing matter,” Jim protests.

“Jim takes all reviews of his…performance very seriously,” Leonard tells her. “And then at some point, he wanted to see how long we could go for before someone called us out on it.”

“So the horse thing…” Carol starts, trailing off uncertainly.

“Nothing but speculations,” he reassures her.

She lets out a sigh of relief and steps inside. “Oh, thank god. I wanted to call you out on that one, but there was this little possibility of it being real and I didn’t want to risk my sanity by checking. I mean, I couldn’t even look at you two after that. It was just so…”

“Disturbing? Yeah, we thought so too.”

“It was more like if sex was a game, you would’ve beaten the final boss,” Carol tells him. “Now, what shall we do about this mess?”

“First things first, I demand you take back that comment about me being ‘kind of vanilla’,” Jim says, “and I want it in writing.”

\--

“So we tell the McKirk Watch that after the horse incident, you two felt the need to slow down and re-evaluate your life choices?” Carol asks, standing by the door with the mini pirate ship in her arms.

“Slow down and recharge,” Jim corrects her. “It’ll take an indefinite amount of time, so maybe you should start dissecting Spock’s love life instead, if you’re still bored. I’ve heard great things about it.”

Carol shakes her head. “I’ve seen where this kind of thing can lead to. I think I’ll stick to talking to Christine about these things. I’ll see you guys later. Thanks for the ship.”

“Any time,” Jim says, waving goodbye before turning back to Leonard. “Well, now that this chat thing’s finally over, I guess everything’s back to normal, hmm?”

Leonard scoffs. “For a very loose definition of ‘normal’, maybe.”

“C’mon, Bones, we’ve got _at least_ a couple of weeks to relax,” Jim tells him with an easy smile.

“A couple of weeks? Isn’t that just peachy.” Holding up the chains, Leonard asks, “So, what do we do with the rest of this stuff?”

Jim shakes his head. “I don’t know. Build ourselves a steampunk birdhouse?”

After a moment of thought, Leonard shrugs. “Yeah, okay. Pass me the hammer.”

**Author's Note:**

> There was actually no point to this, I just really wanted to have them dress up as Leia and Han, and somewhere along the way, a pantomime horse snuck in. Sheer and utter crack. Don't even look at me.


End file.
